The Entrepreneurial Engagement of University Students: Some Insights from a Population-Based Survey

Abstract

Start-ups founded by university students and graduates play a substantial role in bringing new knowledge to the market and in employment creation; a role that appears to be even more important than the one played by the typical technology transfer activities carried out by universities, i.e. patenting and licensing activities, or spin-offs founded by academic staff. In addition, robust empirical evidence suggests that entrepreneurs’ education is a good predictor of firms’ performance. We use a population-based approach to explore entrepreneurship among 61,115 graduates, alumni of the 64 Italian universities that belong to the AlmaLaurea consortium, in the second half of 2014, at the time when they completed their academic experience. In order to assess the potential supply of highly educated entrepreneurs, we detect various levels of engagement in entrepreneurship, including entrepreneurial intentions, and we assess which factors appear to weigh more in a positive or negative manner. We find that the share of intentional entrepreneurs, among the recent cohorts of graduates in Italy, is large (depending on the definition adopted, at least 30%) in comparison to the small share of actual entrepreneurs detected five years after graduation. We discuss which barriers may deter intentional entrepreneurs from being engaged in entrepreneurship and we argue that the provision by universities of entrepreneurial education and training, opportunity of internships, and ICT skills can be effective tools with which to cultivate entrepreneurial skills and to close the gap between intention and action.